25/06/23 18:56

Just one day after the 35^th anniversary of my maternal grandfather’s death and I paid another visit to the cemetery.  And it was during this weekend that I spoke to both Nev and my eldest, Rory, about the direction I’m looking at taking with the book and the possibility of a podcast.  My youngest, Jasper, shares his birthday with this great-grandfather whom he never met.

But the podcast – initially lined up to be a video – is now heading at not using Riverside.fm but instead it may well be Podcastle and still uploaded to Spotify.  It will be easier to record as I’ll be able use a microphone in the phone or otherwise, and not worry about my guests getting camera shy when it’s only their voice being used.  The title of the podcast, “hosted by An Englishman in Paris” is going to be “Coffee Pot Conversations”.  It was going to be “Coffee Shop Conversations” but Nev said coffee pot ran off the tongue easier.  “Proper Coffee Shop with a Proper Copper Coffee Pot and a Proper Copper Coffee Cup Conversations” just didn’t truly flow without the odd expletive cropping up every so often.

My concept is to get around 20 podcasts lined up, released once a week on Thursdays with an Instagram post leading up to it.  I’d do a preview Instagram story and post on the Monday and take it from there.  Any blog entries (which would probably still be behind-the-scenes entries) could quite likely be the Monday posts.  I’d need to have a bank of episodes in order to get the feel of what I’m doing and where I’m heading.  Similar to The Earful Tower, I’d work in seasons so as not to burn out and give myself a chance of being prepped for the next season.  We all know how bogged down with details I can get.

Talking of The Earful Tower, I’m now up to 2020 and France has just entered lockdown; about a fortnight before we did.  Listening to some of the factual podcasts that Oliver Gee had put out at the time made me feel like I was back there.  Not Paris, but the beginning of the farcical handling of the pandemic by not only my government, but the global stage.  I know it was sort of an unprecedented situation we were facing, but it all seemed like a big mess by each country doing it their own way.  And not very well.  But that was a while back and I briefly documented it earlier in this blog as well as in another notebook, or two.  The podcast and the book will be covering it all in more detail.  Possibly. I need to seriously settle down with this book-writing concept.  I’m running out of time, space and money so I have to make the most of any small amount of any of it that I can grab.  That’s why I’m here, 2 hours before Love Island, season 10, episode 21, sitting on my bed, writing furiously away as Coyote Ugly plays in the semi-background.  I need to investigate more about the podcasting app and website.  What I’d love is to have a full podcasting recording setup, but the money, space and technological knowledge simply isn’t within my grasp.  I’m learning slowly which is fine, with the advancement of the material I can supply for the listening public will improve and enhance their audio experiences.  But that still leaves the book.  The blog is the behind-the-scenes work, I know this.  Yet, I’m still casually thinking it may be the actual book.  Not the prequal.  But this makes me think that my own one-upmanship won’t let me settle for this.  I still need the finished book.